Well, here we go!!!

What I learned this week:  


This week I learned that even though I am a teacher, I am also a constant learner.  This week's schedule was full with lots of training, classroom visits by our state legislators and round-table discussions about state-wide education issues.

Tuesday I attended a full-day training by Yolanda Westerberg, our Writer's Workshop guru.  She, as a consultant, visits our school district 2-3 times a year to support our implementation of Writer's Workshop.  She meets with grade-level teams to discuss how best to use the program in our classrooms.  Since beginning the program this year, we had a lot of questions to ask.  It was nice to meet with as a grade-level team to discuss what has worked for us and what hasn't.  Much of this info will be added to my research paper.

Tuesday evening I attended 4 hours of an 8 hour Mandt training.  This system is a "comprehensive approach to preventing, de-escalating and intervening when behavior poses a threat of harm to themselves and/or others." www.mandtsystem.com  I have two special needs students in my kindergarten classroom.  Our school also houses the district's autism program and we are faced daily with potentially harmful behaviors.  This training will enable me to step in and hopefully reduce these outbursts.  I did not think as a general education teacher I would be dealing with things like this.  I am thankful for my district to give us the training needed to support these students.

On Friday morning I welcomed Senator Gary Stevens and Representative Alan Austerman into my classroom.  They were in town to learn about the issues facing teachers.  In the afternoon a group of teachers and parents took part in a round-table discussion.  The issues of flat-funding BSA and vouchers were the "hot topics".  They let us know that the best thing we can do is to continue to educate the legislators and the governor about these issues.  I have learned quite a bit about these issues as well as issues that directly impact teachers especially those in Tier III and Tier IV.  Defined Contribution vs. Defined Benefits, teacher tenure, evaluations, and health care changes proposed.  Very interesting, and scary at the same time!

Now that this week has come to an end and I enjoyed an extra hour of sleep, thank you for the fall-back time change, I am ready to put all of my efforts into this paper.  I look forward to receiving feedback as well as helping others through the final stage of this process.

I've tried to link through Weebly but I could not get it to upload.  Please let me know if you are able to access my paper through this link.  Thank you

http://www.scribd.com/doc/183727535/Classroom-Research-Paper-docx

[scribd id=183727535 key=key-2cwj3b82sd2im3sz4xe9 mode=scroll]

Ways I have contributed to the learning of others:

I have responded to Jamie's Blog.  I am very interested in her topic and shared what I learned at the NEA-Alaska conference.  The theme of the conference was "Bridging the Gap" and that relates perfectly to Jamie's topic.

I also have been following and responding to Scott's blog regarding the use of technology.  I have to admit because of it I have been looking for more engaging technology for my kindergarten classroom.

My biggest challenge continues to be looking at my research in a qualitative way instead of quantitaitvely.  I find myself, even at this stage wanting to measure my results to something.  I remind myself that, as I do every day, in a much more informal way, I am doing qualitative research!

Steps I have taken to further my learning:

This week I have looked at the Youtube video link regarding APA style.  I have re-read our final paper rubric as well as read through the sample paper posted.  I have also finished the textbook Qualitative Research by Sharan B. Merriam.  I gave word clouds a chance and created one through WordItOut.  

This week my main focus is to focus on the rubric and my APA style handbook as I continue to write my paper. I will refer to the texts Qualitative Research and Action Research by Craig A. Merler I will attend our last WebX meeting on Tuesday and Twitter on Thursday.

This week:

     I hosted Tuesday's Tweet session.  This was a lot of fun.  I've come a long way from not even knowing what a tweet was only a couple of months ago!  I can now navigate myself around TweeDeck!

     I bought and downloaded a new app, "Too Loud".  This was mentioned in someone's blog I read last week. Sorry, I do not remember who it was, but THANK YOU!   It works wonders in my classroom.

     I opened my classroom to my principal for her to practice with our new teacher evaluation tool, iObservation.  She came in and observed for 15 minutes and entered her data directly into the computer.  She submitted it and we both looked at the results.  It is a great program and I look forward to this new method of receiving valuable feedback.  The old model was not very useful.

     I think I can honestly say I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The step-by-step process has made this overwhelming project more manageable. I have learned a lot.  For one I have increased my technological vocabulary: Word clouds, Twitter, Weebly, TweetDeck, Survey Monkey to name a few.

This week:  I plan to continue writing my paper and I hope to use some of the technology mentioned by my classmates to illustrate my data.  I have only just written my results in narrative form.

What I have learned though my PLN:  I still have much more to research as we continue with Writer's Workshop throughout the year.  My grade-level team as well as my principal are very interested in my results.

As I sit and continue the process of drafting my paper this weekend, I find I continue to have many questions.

This week's data collection was much more successful.  I sent out a survey to my kindergarten grade-level team, 10 teachers, via SurveyMonkey.  The first week got one reply.  This week I received 7 more.  (Coffee bribes seemed to have done the trick.)  Eight out of 10 pretty good rate of return.  Honestly, I was hoping for 100% participation.  I have read through the responses that are very nicely organized with SurveyMonkey.  I have also had further conversations with my colleagues regarding my subject of research.  Many are interested in my study and have suggested a continued look into its success as we go through the school year.  Some also mentioned the inability to answer my questions fully as it is so new and we are only 8 weeks in.  I asked for their responses to reflect upon the program to this point in the year.

This week's assignments have been a little confusing to me.  I first submitted my proposal on Friday and invited Scott and Chris to view it for peer review.  I then withdrew it as an assignment pending the reviews.  I received one review, thank you Scott, and made small adjustments to my assignment  before I resubmitted it for assessment.  I appreciate the extension on the deadline to 9 am Monday, but I cannot stay up any later to wait for my second review.

I have also been looking for invitations for proposals to be reviewed.  I have not received one.  

Is anyone else feeling that they need to have this week to work on this step in the process?  I feel like I need more time to read my reviews and make the changes necessary before assessment.  I would also like to be able to have the time necessary to put into writing my two reviews.

I am also greatly appreciative for the extension for our final project.  I hope to stay on the schedule we first were given but, I can see the need for extra time in cases such as this week's assignments.  

I would love to hear from the rest of the class as to how they are feeling about this week.

This week's learning curve for me was to focus on the research method.  How did I want to go about answering the questions I have?  The Twitter session discussions have been extremely helpful for me.  My focus is not on student success or growth, my research focus is on the effectiveness of a new program added to our district.  I am looking at this as it relates to our New Alaska ELA Standards.  Having the luxury of unlimited time to look at each standard and each writer's workshop lesson as it relates to the standard is not something I, nor any teacher has.  The ability to ask my fellow kindergarten teachers about this new program and how they see its effectiveness in the classroom is priceless.  I am prepared to hear information from them that I may not even have considered.  I would like to continue my research over the rest of the year to effectively create age/grade-appropriate writing workshop lessons for my kindergarten students.

Coming up with focused questions is my struggle.

I am researching the effects of the New Alaska State Standards as it pertains to our district's addition to writer's workshop to our literacy instruction.  I believe the best method of collecting data would be through questionnaires to my grade-level colleagues.  I am most interested in how we can best support our kindergarten students through this process.  Is writer's workshop the most efficient way to cover the standards?  Much of my research has found that there are many different ways to implement this program, I guess the biggest question I have is, will the highly scripted program we were given along with specific training have an impact on teaching our students to the new standards?  Or should we be given the freedom to use different aspects of the program and other writing workshop ideas as well as lessons from previous years to fit the needs of our students?